After a steep lull, Orange County appears to be ramping up its efforts to turn detainees over to federal immigration authorities.
Last year, 221 detainees were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after the O.C. Sheriff’s Department informed the agency of their release. That was up from just 17 in 2022. While the 2023 number is still far below from the 717 ICE custody transfers in 2018, it marks a sharp upswing after a years-long decline.
Immigration advocates say the practice disproportionately targets Orange County’s Mexican and Vietnamese communities.
Mai Nguyen Do, research and policy manager at the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, said the uptick shows that targeting these communities were not exclusive to the Trump administration and that the Southeast Asian deportation crisis is far from over.
“Local law enforcement’s continued collaboration with federal immigration enforcement can really have a dampening effect on immigrants and refugee communities’ trust in government,” Do said. “Oftentimes (it) will deter people from getting the help that they need in a lot of different situations, whether it’s health care or going to the police to try and report something that might have happened to them.”
Local law enforcement agencies in California can choose whether to notify ICE when an undocumented person with a federal misdemeanor conviction is about to be released from custody, allowing agents to pick them up for possible deportation. So even if ICE requests that an inmate be transferred, known as a detainer, local agencies don’t have to comply.
Under the California Values Act (SB 54), signed into law…
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